Pt. Robinson Lighthouse, Vashon, WA

What a fabulous trip to the Seattle area! Fechin at the Frye. European Masters at SAM. And a stellar ferry trip over to Vashon Island, which I'm not familiar with so I just drove randomly and ended up on the Maury Island side, and walked the rest of the way to find this.... the cutest little lighthouse that ya ever did see! So I got the easel rig out of the trunk and set up for a lovely afternoon of painting. I'm much happier with this effort than any other (all three!!!!) of my plein air efforts. Maybe partially because I found a panel that has a really wonderful surface (Ampersand) so the paint went down on it well. But more because it was such a glorious, beautiful, sunny, enchanting day... perhaps that shows through a little.

Rooster Rock paintout

This was a fun day trip, down the gorge with Stephanie, Vicki and Tim. The painting I came home with lacked contrast, so I've spent some time back in the studio with it. Still having a hard time with the shadows in the foreground... they should look contiguous, not like a bunch of sloppy blotches. Not that there's anything wrong with sloppy blotches, but they aren't creating the look I'm after, of the shadow from the tree behind my easel that's falling on the foreground. There are small light shapes on the ground where the light shows through the leaves. I hate to spend more time on this though, 'cus it's really not doing it for me. As my mom used to say, "we'll see."  That always meant "no"! (i.e., I don't think I'll get back to this one.)

Clare

This is Clare, another work in progress from a Friday at Kat's, and one I will definitely resume as soon as able. This is a dreadful photo, so that doesn't help to show that she is such a charming carrot top! This will serve as chronological place saver for the time being.

A Still Life... for the record...

Work in progress, which probably won't go further. Still lifes aren't really my thing, but I used it to test out the "Guerrilla Painter Cartón Board" which I saw mentioned somewhere and ordered a pack of it. Not crazy about it--it might work better if I gesso it. Paint sinks in really quickly, so I had to keep mixing more and more and more. It really absorbs the oil in the paint, so that the surface looks more like pastel. One for the "experiments" pile.

Yanna

Oh gosh, just another half hour would have been terrific! I need to lower her mouth and chin so her neck isn't that long. And work on the background. But I'll probably just move on to the next painting. This one's FTR (for the record).

P.S. I did do a bit of work on her a while back, and am finally uploading it. The phone pic color is a slightly whack (her hair is not blue!) but whatever.

First Plein Air Painting

...with my new French easel. I set it up hastily and was so excited to get it that I jumped right into painting immediately. I didn't travel far... this is right outside my studio door, in back of the house! Such perfect weather in the past couple of days, I've been chomping at the bit to get outside. But I thought I'd better test drive it first, and make sure I have everything I need packed in it before I hit the road.

Here's the little beauty:

Yippeeeeeee! This is going to be a FUN summer!

Waiting.

Our lovely Friday model was seated in front of a neutral-colored drapery, so I rearranged the room a bit (not literally, just in the painting!) to suit myself. I arrived for the session having just mixed the "Zorn palette" from a YouTube video, so I decided to give it a go. I had the colors all mixed before Tess even arrived.

The palette consists of two colors--yellow ochre and alizarin--plus black and white. So this was an interesting experiment. Surprisingly, I don't feel like I was missing any colors. This has more of a Hopper quality than Zorn, but that's as much because of the subject matter (the "narrative") as the color. But I wonder if Hopper used the same limited palette sometimes... I'll have to take a look. I've got a huge book of Hopper's work checked out of the library, and I'm sure that influenced my decisions in this painting.